Application of different markers and data-analysis tools to the examination of biodiversity can lead to different results: a case study with Starmerella bacillaris (synonym Candida zemplinina) strains.

Abstract

Starmerella bacillaris (Candida zemplinina) is a genetically heterogeneous species. In this work, the diversity of 41 strains of various origins is examined and compared by the analysis of the length polymorphism of nuclear microsatellites and the RFLP of mitochondrial genomes. The band patterns are analysed with UPGMA, neighbor joining, neighbor net, minimum spanning tree and non-metric MDS algorithms. The results and their comparison to previous analyses demonstrate that different markers and different clustering methods can result in very different groupings of the same strains. The observed differences between the topologies of the dendrograms also indicate that the positions of the strains do not necessarily reflect their real genetic relationships and origins. The possibilities that the differences might be partially due to different sensitivity of the markers to environmental factors (selection pressure) and partially to the different grouping criteria of the algorithms are also discussed.